Bad Country: A Novel (14 page)

Rodeo stared at her since at the moment Sirena glowed with rehab tan and was taut from weeks of a healthy diet and no booze or drugs. Her honey hair was naturally bleached ash blond now, her eyes were clear. Her body, always exceptional by any standards, seemed now simply perfect even if a good bit of it was fake.

You are no Indian, Sirena Rae.

I’m as Indian as you.

Rodeo grunted.

Fuck you, Mestizo. You’re not half the man I am because you don’t have half the cojones I got.

I wouldn’t argue that, Sirena.

She ignored Rodeo and seemed to think deeply for a moment. Even if somebody is killing Indians, I’m too tough to die anyway, said Sirena.

She started to rise from the water but before she could get her whole show going Rodeo turned and walked back to his room. He did not look over his shoulder as he unlocked his door and stepped into #116. He could not help but leave the door unlocked though.

*   *   *

Though Arizona Motel did not have Wi-Fi in the rooms, the manager did have it in the apartment that adjoined the office space and guests were allowed to poach his signal in the “loungette.” The same motley crew was assembled there today, slouched on the cheap, mock-Imperial settee and in the spray-painted gold armchairs, all smoking cigarettes and ashing on the new polyester Persian throw rugs despite N
O
S
MOKING
signs posted on every wall.

Two elderly Anglo men were sitting together on the love seat huddled over a battered and dirty laptop arguing over free porn sites. An old Hispanic man was reading the Bible on his Kindle, cursing in Spanish as he tried to manipulate electronic pages that, he complained loudly, kept flipping inexplicably from Genesis right to Revelations, from creation to destruction. An old Anglo woman knitted what looked to be mittens for a child. Zander Jone played pool by himself, waiting for a mark. The pool shark seemed constructed of pool cues himself and articulated as a puppet, his cheap straw hat perched on the back of his head as if he were an extra in a 1950’s Western.

Game? Zander asked Rodeo.

You know I can’t give you any match, Zander.

I’ll play you for fun, man, said Zander. Professional courtesy, one rodeo star to another.

You never won more than entry fee at a county rodeo in your life, Zander, said Rodeo. And you never played pool for fun in your life either.

I’ll play you for a ten-spot then and spot you two balls, Zander said. Your choice after break.

I’ll play you for four dollars. Rodeo placed this amount on the table’s rim. Since that’ll buy you a Forty and get you out of my way for a while. Zander didn’t even bother to put his money on the table. Rodeo sunk one ball on break and then removed two unplayable balls then managed to sink two in a row before he missed badly.

Even a blind squirrel can find a couple of nuts now and then, the hustler said.

Zander ran the table in two minutes, pocketed his beer money, tipped his drugstore cowboy hat at Rodeo and ambled outdoors cool and humble as a true hustler.

Rodeo set up his laptop on the pool table. RoseRite.com sold editorial services to fledgling poets, though the photographs of the proprietor of this virtual business could have indicated another sort of service, one less cerebral than sexual, though the site did not seem to function as an actual escort service.

The girl who owned the site was obviously the pink-haired one in Samuel Rocha’s snapshots. There was a link from RoseRite.com to Rosejewel.net, a site that sold clunky, “artistic” custom jewelry that was hard to imagine anyone ever wearing anywhere except at the Jewel and Mineral Show. The Hotmail address on both sites was a dead end and the contact phone numbers on both sites had been disconnected. Rodeo used his cell phone to dial the number on the back of the RoseRite.com calling card.

This is the Kettle, open 24/7/365, a woman said.

Is Rose there? Rodeo asked.

She works mornings and this is not her number, the woman said.

The phone went dead but Rodeo at least had found a place to start.

“Ronald Rocha” did not achieve any hits on any search engines. Rodeo used the professional tracking service he regularly frequented and failed to find the man there either.

He might be able to locate the man through Veterans Administration if the man had actually been military but Rodeo didn’t have any good contacts with any federal agency lately and except for Clint Overman he no longer had useful and dependable contacts with local or regional Law Enforcement. He worked for several different bail bond companies but these were simply small businesses. So since he had no significant contacts to explore or exploit, he was dependent on his own gray cells.

According to Olin at the Buffet Bar there was some connection between Ronald Rocha and Randy Miller, former Pima County judge and state senator and Tea Party candidate for Congress but Rodeo could not find any such link on the Internet. He did stumble upon blogs and amateurish Web sites that speculated on the supposed assassination attempts on Randy Miller, all of which could be traced to vigilante and right-wing groups in the Tombstone area.

Rodeo abandoned the Internet search and walked out into the dry heat, hefted the dog into the shotgun seat of the truck and then drove around the horseshoe parking lot. As he passed the swimming pool he saw hanging on the gate Sirena’s cutoff blue jeans and the ripped undershirt. Catching the woman’s scent the dog whined.

She shot you in the ass with a shotgun, Rodeo said. That doesn’t make any difference to you does it? The dog whined again and the man rubbed the old dog’s head. You never had good sense about women.

*   *   *

Rodeo drove to BoonDocks for dinner. The bar used to be a genuine downtown roadhouse but lately it had become more family-friendly. Still, Tucson being Tucson there was always some variety of regulars and drop-ins beyond what one might find elsewhere in a midtown saloon restaurant that was set amongst used car dealerships, pawn stores, and Laundromats, tire stores and gas stations and a rundown strip mall that boasted an A-1 Rent-All, Deseret Industries Thrift Store, Little Caesar’s Pizza Parlor, Fry’s supermarket and a discount store that advertised itself as “Everything For At Least A Dollar.”

Only one Harley was parked in the shade on the north side of the building, both American and Confederate States of America flags bolted to the bike’s rear panniers. There were also two beaten-down pickups side by side in the northside parking lot, one vehicle pointing east and the other west in a cowboy conference alignment. A near-new Suburban occupied the prime handicap space in palm tree shade near the rear door of the bar, the tailgate covered in M
Y
C
HILD IS AN
H
ONORS
S
TUDENT AT
T
RINITY
C
HRISTIAN
A
CADEMY
bumper stickers. Other vehicles were scattered around the lot, dusty Crown Victorias and Cadillacs, pickups old and new, even a pink VW bug and a newish Mustang in University of Arizona crimson with Wildcat license plates.

Rodeo noted the faded green Toyota Land Cruiser, circa mid-1970s bumped up against the giant Chianti bottle that was a local landmark. A faded brassiere dangled from one of the grapes that hung from the concrete vine twined around the twenty-foot-tall concrete-encased sculpture. Someone had spray-painted a gang symbol high up on the neck of the statue but someone else had pasted a N
UKE THE
G
AY
W
HALES FOR
J
ESUS
bumper sticker over the gang mark.

Rodeo did not see the black 4 × 4 Sirena had driven to Arizona Motel earlier that day. He parked nearby the green Land Cruiser and whistled the dog awake, lifted him out of the truck and the man and his dog entered the familiar gloom of BoonDocks.

The restaurant part of the saloon was a huge room with four-tops, pool tables, and a bandstand and then in the middle of the big room was a long horseshoe bar and then with two-tops on the “bar” side and with TVs in every conceivable place on all sides. All the televisions were tuned to cable sports channels or Fox News outlets. The closed end of the bar near the door was covered in quarter poker machines that paid out in free games. From the kitchen directly behind the open end of the bar came the smell of fried potatoes and seared steak.

Above the bottle shelves hung dozens of small galvanized pails hanging from screw-hooks, the pails just big enough to hold a few packs of cigarettes, a lighter and small personal items, condoms and calling cards, car keys and combs. These hanging buckets were like the personal lockers of the regulars and were earned only after months of regular patronage, to be removed when regular bar attendance flagged. All the pails were decorated—painted, stickered, glittered, stenciled, grafittied—some created with obvious artistry and care while others were clearly the work of drunks with too much time and super glue on their hands. Many were decorated with the logos of sports teams from all over the country, representing the homelands of the retirees who had relocated to Tucson in general and BoonDocks in particular, or else with insignia of the various branches of the Armed Services, mostly Marines even though the Air Force actually dominated the town.

Rodeo’s preferred seat at the bar near the outside door was occupied by a stack of textbooks and a legal pad, so he took a seat midway down the on the saloon side of the bar. The dog slunk under his master’s boots, circled three times and went to sleep. Rodeo swiveled on his barstool and scanned the eastside wall to find his photo where it had been for almost fifteen years. The cover shot from
American Rodeo
magazine pictured Rodeo in his most famous flying dismount from the saddle bronc Nun Ridden Bad 13 during the final round of the PRCA World Championship he had won. The other memorabilia on that wall featured the BoonDocks’ proprietor, Tank Hage, Jr., in his glory days as a linebacker and a steer wrestler.

Feeling nostalgic?

A big, fat, tanned Anglo man Rodeo’s age extended a hand over the bar and Rodeo turned and shook the hand firmly and let it go quickly before his fingers got crushed. The bartender reached into an old zinc-lined deep cooler and extracted a Schlitz can, wiped the cold frost off with the long tail of his short-sleeved cowboy shirt, popped the top and set it in front of Rodeo.

Some days more than others, Tank, Rodeo said. He drank off a quarter of his beer and set the can down, looking at his old high school pal.

You tending bar at your own place these days, Tank? I thought those days were over for you.

Waiting for the new girl, the bar owner said. He looked around as if this new girl might appear at any moment and from any direction. She’s been a bit of a problem. Tank seemed distracted.

How’s things besides late employees? asked Rodeo.

Fine, said the big man. Though my chiropractor costs me almost half as much as my wife’s Platinum American Express card. When the bar owner stretched his back one of the pearl snap buttons on his shirt popped open around his big, hard belly as his back cracked. He rubbed the razor-cut stubble on the base of his bull neck. Some headaches the neurologist can’t figure out, the man said. Probably from all the concussions. Though he says it might be psychological. The bar owner shook his head as if it stung and then shook out one of his legs and flexed an arm. Had my right knee scoped again and one of the pins replaced in my elbow but the orthopedist says otherwise I’m good for another five years.

Good for what?

I guess that’s the question, buddy. Tank shook his head like a wounded bull. My wife’s psychotherapist she sent me to says I might have seasonal affective disorder.

Well, since it’s no seasons in Tucson but monsoon season that shouldn’t bother you too much, Tank. Buck Up and Bear Down.

No pain, no gain, said Tank. Idn’t that what the coaches at Tucson High always told us?

I didn’t listen to those coaches very much, said Rodeo.

Well I did which is why I was All-State and you weren’t, buddy. The bar owner sighed deeply and stretched his back until it cracked. But now I’m suffering for it.

I’m glad you don’t complain about it, Rodeo said.

No complaints from me any old steer wrestler who played football hard don’t have, said Tank. The man looked past Rodeo and all around the bar and then looked back at Rodeo. How ’bout you, cowboy? Holdin’ it up or just holdin’ it?

I don’t have the money for an orthopedist or neurologist or chiropractor or psychotherapist to build a conversation around, I’m afraid, Tank. How’s business?

Going more for the dinner crowd around here. Even got a goaddamned kid’s menu. Tank shifted on his feet as if he could not get comfortable. Tried to get something going last year with a new chicken shack franchise but we had problems getting the wings up from Mexico and that collapsed on me as a clusterfuck. Need some fiduciary infusion, but can’t get it … Same ol’ shit.

How’s the family, Tank?

Fine. When Tank Hage shrugged he winced. Same ol’ shit there too. I’m on my way out right now to watch another goddamned soccer tournament the girls are playing second string in. Kevin didn’t make All-Stars in Little League again this year. The man shook his head. They’re all Honors Roll every year so at least that’s something I guess.

You take your victories where you can, Rodeo said. Tank looked down at his own big hands on the wet bar he owned, nodded.

I was by your mom’s place recently, said Rodeo. How’s Eryn doing these days?

Eryn’s fine, I guess, Tank said. She eats painkillers all day and drinks like a fish all night and has something to say about everything and everybody as per usual. The bar owner looked around again as if waiting for something to happen. Still has her fingers in everything in the world and won’t stay out of my personal business. But she’s sharp as a tack when she wants to be and still tight as Dick’s Hatband about her money. But what can you do about your own mother?

I’m not sure I had a lot of options with Grace, Rodeo said.

There’s always options, buddy. Just most of them bad. Tank glanced around again and wiped sweat off his face with a bar towel.